Everyone has a personal learning curve. We develop ways of doing things over the years, whether it’s how to solve a specific problem or hone a skill. There’s a technique we use, and over time it becomes our accepted way of doing things.
That doesn’t mean our way is good. Or the best. Or the most efficient. It’s just that we’ve decided to approach something a certain way and we’re in a comfort zone, so we proceed the way we did before.
I continue playing a good friend in “Words With Friends.” Maybe you’ve played it. I’ve always approached it as a version of the board game Scrabble, and that led to my downfall.
My friend demolishes me repeatedly. For the past three years, she has beaten me 157 times and I have beaten her once. She regularly beats me by over 200 points. You’d think I’d learn to play the game differently, but no, I keep trying to play it like Scrabble and make tough words that please me.
You don’t win that way. As demonstrated, I lose over 99 percent of the time. This doesn’t deter me from starting a new game each time I lose. In fact, I started to thin part of the reason I lost was because I went first and the letter tiles you get for your opening gambit are almost always horrible (U, R, M, N, E, L, T, for example). See if you can make some big words that give you a lot of points with those letters.
Maybe if I waited until she started the next game, by going second I might improve my score. But I got the feeling she felt sorry for me and wouldn’t start the next game, so I continued to come back for further punishment and would take the opening shot.
But I’ve learned. In the past year, I lost by less than 100 points a few times. MORAL VICTORY!
Then, oddly, the past couple of months, I’ve found the gap narrowing further and my play improving. There’s a bit of strategy involved, one I’ve stayed away from until now because I’m a word purist and reject the notion of playing around with the letter tiles to see where they get rejected or accepted by the software program running the game.
Now that I’ve learned it, and accepted it (which is a whole ‘nother ballgame), I’m bearing down on my opponent, closing in, starting to get a taste of what you have to do to repeatedly increase your score. It’s a subtle change, testing out words to see what works and how the program responds, rather than solely relying on your intuitive brainpower.
I’ve avoided this until the last few months because I wanted to challenge my brain and not work within the parameters of the game’s program. Now I’ve learned. I’ve accepted how it works (which far too frequently involves giving you letters that don’t work together and don’t fit into any of the words already played), so you have to take what the game gives you in terms of opportunity.
It’s kind of a good lesson for life, too. Learn what works. Find how to work the system more efficiently. When this happens, things start to fall into place.
I’m not winning yet, but I’m getting closer. The words are smaller. I don’t understand all of them. But my scores are going up. I’ve learned.
That doesn’t mean our way is good. Or the best. Or the most efficient. It’s just that we’ve decided to approach something a certain way and we’re in a comfort zone, so we proceed the way we did before.
I continue playing a good friend in “Words With Friends.” Maybe you’ve played it. I’ve always approached it as a version of the board game Scrabble, and that led to my downfall.
My friend demolishes me repeatedly. For the past three years, she has beaten me 157 times and I have beaten her once. She regularly beats me by over 200 points. You’d think I’d learn to play the game differently, but no, I keep trying to play it like Scrabble and make tough words that please me.
You don’t win that way. As demonstrated, I lose over 99 percent of the time. This doesn’t deter me from starting a new game each time I lose. In fact, I started to thin part of the reason I lost was because I went first and the letter tiles you get for your opening gambit are almost always horrible (U, R, M, N, E, L, T, for example). See if you can make some big words that give you a lot of points with those letters.
Maybe if I waited until she started the next game, by going second I might improve my score. But I got the feeling she felt sorry for me and wouldn’t start the next game, so I continued to come back for further punishment and would take the opening shot.
But I’ve learned. In the past year, I lost by less than 100 points a few times. MORAL VICTORY!
Then, oddly, the past couple of months, I’ve found the gap narrowing further and my play improving. There’s a bit of strategy involved, one I’ve stayed away from until now because I’m a word purist and reject the notion of playing around with the letter tiles to see where they get rejected or accepted by the software program running the game.
Now that I’ve learned it, and accepted it (which is a whole ‘nother ballgame), I’m bearing down on my opponent, closing in, starting to get a taste of what you have to do to repeatedly increase your score. It’s a subtle change, testing out words to see what works and how the program responds, rather than solely relying on your intuitive brainpower.
I’ve avoided this until the last few months because I wanted to challenge my brain and not work within the parameters of the game’s program. Now I’ve learned. I’ve accepted how it works (which far too frequently involves giving you letters that don’t work together and don’t fit into any of the words already played), so you have to take what the game gives you in terms of opportunity.
It’s kind of a good lesson for life, too. Learn what works. Find how to work the system more efficiently. When this happens, things start to fall into place.
I’m not winning yet, but I’m getting closer. The words are smaller. I don’t understand all of them. But my scores are going up. I’ve learned.